pity this busy monster, manunkind
by cailin na gealai
Summary: A Quinn angst ficlet interspersed with e.e. cummings' poem "pity this busy monster, manunkind". Trigger warnings for suicidal thoughts and self-loathing. Set in Season 1 through the car crash.


**Trigger warnings: self-loathing, suicidal thoughts.**

**This is a ficlet about Quinn, going from Season 1 to just after the car crash. It's interspersed with e.e. cummings' poem "**_**pity this busy monster, manunkind". **_**e.e. cummings is brilliant but I don't own a word he's ever written. Neither do I own Glee. Please, do not sue.**

_pity this busy monster, manunkind,_

_not. Progress is a comfortable disease:_

she's always busy. Busy is her, busy defines her. Straight A's, Cheerio. She is as bright as her blond ponytail and strong as her lean body. She defines outward perfection. and oh god she is a bitch. she is a monster wrapped up in white middle-class high school beauty. She prays every Sunday morning, kneeling in a cold pew in her little white church dress, hoping that God may forgive the vapid.

_your victim (death and life safely beyond)_

_plays with the bigness of his littleness_

Puck is nothing. He is a Lima Loser. He is never going anywhere, he'll never do anything but clean pools and fuck girls in his small-minded mediocrity of life. So she lets him get her drunk, and she can feel Lucy's bigness, her fat oozing through Quinn's pores, she can almost see it, and shit, she must be really drunk. So she sleeps with Puck and forgets about Finn and Lucy and her own irredeemable sin.

_- electrons deify one razorblade_

_into a mountainrange; _

she claims later she never, ever considered suicide. She did. For a moment. Her eyes focused on the tiny pink plus sign on the pregnancy test, then on the razor blade held delicately between the thumb and forefinger of the other hand. The razorblade is so pretty, she thinks. Too pretty to waste on her sins. She puts it down. tries and fails to fucking stop crying.

_lenses extend_

_unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish_

_returns on its unself._

nine months. Why the hell she had to carry this thing nine months she didn't know. She would not wish this, not on anyone. She spends much of her time wishing, wanting things back: she wants her family, her home, her body- they have all been made vassals to this growing monster in her. thoughts swirl around her head- but she can't just kill it because that is more sin, and is there some divine tally sheet somewhere, keeping score of her wrongness? She can feel it growing and she wants to die.

_A world of made_

_is not a world of born - pity poor flesh_

then Beth is out of her and beauty is in her arms and she has never known love to this day, not like this, not like this, and Puck is there with her and it is beautiful and fucking painful. Quinn walks away from that lovely baby, because the fruit of her womb is not enough to justify becoming a Lima Loser, becoming less than she is. Her rebellious mind keeps telling her that it is a worthy sacrifice but the rest of her screams No, not our baby, not our problem, let Shelby keep the mistake. The extra flesh is gone from you, let us return to The Life You Had! You are to become more than a mother at sixteen. still gooseflesh rises on her neck when she sees dark-haired Shelby coo over the daughter of theirs, Quinn's hands shake as she signs papers to give away this beautiful golden child, record of her sin in blood and tears and the blue eyes of her baby. she always wonders, is this how Mary felt? her child ripped from her into a cold world? but Quinn is no Virgin Mary. Quinn is sinful and her child is proof of her wrongdoing.

_and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this_

_fine specimen of hypermagical _

_ultraomnipotence._

The world goes funny after that, with too much dark, as Quinn dyes her hair and tries to get away from The Life She Had, because it wasn't waiting for her, she doesn't miss it but she does. She wants her life back but she has it back and it isn't the same and what is she to do? she fucking wants her baby, wants her so desperately it is a physical ache. there is nothing left but to become a Lima Loser, and if she is to become nobody she will have her child with her. There is nothing she can do but she is going crazy and the walls are spinning and she is everywhere at once and she doesn't know what to do because sin coats her like an extra skin that is too small like Lucy was too big, and she can never get away.

_We doctors know_

_a hopeless case if - _

On her way to Rachel's wedding- her fucking _wedding_- Quinn texts and drives and she knows she isn't supposed to, that it is a Bad Idea. and the badness follows as she is crushed and spun and pain hazes and blurs her blue eyed vision, and her legs hurt, they fucking hurt and what the hell just happened?

and she is in the hospital again and she can't feel her legs. She remembers that she swore she never thought of suicide. she thinks of it again like the evil little girl she is; some other world, where her sin does not stick to her and maybe there is a God who does not hate her. a world with a daughter who loves her.

instead she pushes the little button for more morphine and passes out again.

_listen: there's a hell_

_of a good universe next door; let's go_

**A/N: As with all my stories, I do ask that if you decide to add my story to your favorites list, you'd take a moment to tell me why.**


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